Tag Archives: Randy Mosher

The Aheiateteo are the 5 Aztec Gods of excess and pleasure. 5 Rabbit, or Macuiltochtli, is the God of drunkeness, and is the God that the founders named this Chicago Cervecería after. An interesting name for a brewery, and one I kind of doubt the “Man” understood when they approved the license for this brewery. The history of the first Latin-themed brewery in the United States is mired in drama, with one of the founding members suing the other one. Maybe some of that famous Latin fire and passion? The beers are still flowing though, with Randy Mosher, the Radical Brewer himself writing the recipes.

5 Vulture, or Macuilcozcacuauhtli, is the God of gluttony. The scavenging nature of the vulture represents the stripping off of deeply rooted lustful and envious impulses from our being. The god is associated with wisdom and longevity.

This beer is a uniquely North American creation. An Amber Ale, one of the only true American Styles of beer, that has a small amount of roasted Ancho Chiles, a new world fruit. It smells like an earthy chili. I love chili. I probably end up eating chili in some form every single day of my life. This smell is very inviting to someone like me.

One of the founders of this brewery is from Costa Rica. When I was there, there was this light American-style lager brewed locally in San José called Imperial everywhere. Now someone is bringing a little Costa Rican flair to the booming craft beer scene in the states, and with this brewery, you end up with some pretty descent beers.

It has a dark brown color, with an off-white head. The head is small, and does not last long. I think that could be because of the oils from the chilies.

Chili beers in my experience are hit and miss. Sometimes they taste like taking a swig from a Tabasco bottle, and sometimes, like this time, they taste delicious. This one kind of tastes like an interesting mole sauce. I love mole sauce. It tastes darker than the description would lead you to expect. It has subtle spices and subtle bitterness, but luckily not much hoppiness.

I was eating it with buffalo flavored tacos, and it kind of clashed. A more traditional flavored taco probably would have tasted better. Maybe a nice flat-iron steak with your favorite mole sauce.

I think it’s high time for a brew session. It’s been months since my last one. With summer coming up, it might just be time to try my first wheat beer. It is a rather difficult beer to brew when brewing all grain, but as an extract brewer it is straightforward. The complicated part of making a wheat beer is the mash. Unlike barley, wheat tends to get sticky and gummy when wet. It is great for making bread, and if’ you’ve ever made bread you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s the reason wheat is traditionally used for bread and barley is traditionally used for beer. Since it should be simple, it’s also a great beer as an introduction for brewing. I based this beer on one from my Radical Brewing book by Randy Mosher.

The recipe I came up with is the following:

1.5lb of Dry Pale Malt Extract

6.25lb of Liquid Malt Wheat Extract

Wyeast #3068 Weihenstephan Weizen Liquid Yeast

Since in a wheat beer, the hops kind of take a back seat, I’ve gone to my refrigerator to see what I have at hand. Right now I have Nugget, Cascade and Northern Brewer. I don’t want to use Cascade, as that will impart a particularly American flair to a beer that I’m trying to do in a Bavarian style. This leaves me with Northern Brewer and Nugget, which are both bittering hops. I’ll probably use Northern brewer since I may want to save the higher Alpha Acid Nuggets to use on other beers with more of bitterness to them. I might finish with Tettnang if the Brew store has them as this is a traditional hop to use in a weiss beer like this.

Beer Smith tells me that this recipe will have the following attributes:

IBU = 14 (depending on my choice of hops)

SRM (color scale) = 7.9

Original Gravity = 1.058

Estimate ABV= 5.8%

Beer Smith claims that some of these are slightly outside the normal range of a Weiss Beer, but who cares? What matters is that it tastes good. Mosher tends to not let BJCP style guidelines worry him. He is the radical brewer after all. I also always seem to get slight differences from what the Radical Brewing book claims I’ll get and what Beersmith Claims I’ll get. This happened for my Coffee Stout as well, and my own measurements of gravity where closer to what the Radical Brewing book said I would get.

I’m going to try to head to my local Brew and Grow this Saturday and hopefully brew up the beer on Sunday.